Venus Viewing @ Van Vleck = Vivacious Visual Vacation

If you’re on campus this dismal Tuesday afternoon and want to sight some Venus Transit Authority before it’s too late (according to EarthSky, the next transit of Venus won’t occur until 2117—that’s past evenMartin Benjamin ’57’s lifespan), head over to VanWyngarden Vleck Observatory right now for some good old-fashioned staring into space. According to Middletown Patch, the observatory will be offering a live video stream of the event and resources regarding previous transits of Venus:

Even if the weather is cloudy, Wesleyan will still hold a celebration of Venus with live video streams of the transit in the observatory classroom, and a collection of rare books from the Special Collections and Archives at Wesleyan’s Olin Library with information about the 18th- and 19th-century transits of Venus.

The transit starts just past 6 p.m., and the observatory will be open beginning around 5:30 p.m. and running until 8:15 p.m. Information on parking can be found here.

For those who can’t make it, Huff Post is offering live coverage of the astronomical event, and EarthSky has a useful and readable roundup of precisely WTF is going on. For more on John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, did you know he worked on the Manhattan Project? Well, he did.